Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to motorized personal transport means, more specifically, a field of power-assisted footwear to transport a user.
Description of Related Art
Power-assisted footwear enabling travel or motion of a user has been known as a means of personal transportation devices and generally limited to a concept of powered or motorized roller skates and in-line skates that involve skating motion. Examples of such efforts in the field are U.S. Pat. No. 3,876,032, U.S. Pat. No. 4,508,187, U.S. Pat. No. 5,236,058, U.S. Pat. No. 5,797,466 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,059,062. All these efforts represent a user's motion wherein the natural walking movement has little contribution, if not yet rendered useless, to the motion of the user with the power-assisted footwear in a working mode. In addition, in most of the prior efforts, the user of the power-assisted footwear has limited control on the speed of the footwear. Contrary to such power-assisted footwear that are designed to especially avoiding natural walking movements and targeted on a sportier motion, the present invention is designed to supplement the natural walking movement by providing a range bound, user selected increment to the normal walking speed which is always in response to the user's walking intention.
U.S. Pat. No. 9,027,690 by Dijon describes and claims another type of power-assisted footwear. This teaching utilizes a hinge system which pivots the mechanical belt when the foot bend during walking. While this device is useful as a personal transport means, it is dissimilar to the invention described herein, and lacks certain features and functional benefits that will become apparent to those skilled in the art by reading the detailed description accompanying with the drawings and the claims below.
The present invention is designed to be user friendly and to have an advantage of power-assisted motion in addition to normal walking motion such that a user walks at a faster speed than normal walking without altering the stability or the movements of a normal forward walking action.